by Matthew Waugh
Southerners recruited only the premium of crop for this little weekend away. As this was League, your average Joe just wouldn’t cut the gravy on this expedition so the squad met at Don Muang and got on their way down to the holiday destination that is Phuket.
Friday night saw a quiet evening of stretching and hydration in prep for the day of war we had signed up for. 8am these trained athletes rolled into their bus ready to fight for Southern Glory. Game one saw typical fade outs of Dust Brett and equally Dust, when hanging with Brett, Sod. Both played about 5minutes before mutually agreeing this was too intense for them and dropped out of the participating squad. Despite these wastes of Aerospace we went on to knock up a sound victory of a couple of tries.
Game 2 saw us versing the future finalists were we fought out a draw setting the scene for a great final later in the afternoon.
Game 3 we met a team of young eager gents that wanted nothing more than to knock southerners out of finals contention. They gave it all they had but due to Toa the meat slab all their efforts were in vein, Southern rolling on into a finals spot.
Game 4 saw us field an experimental side which did not pay dividends for coach Steel and handing victory to a new side to the Thai League community – steel was reported stating “despite the result, it’s great for the development of the game to see new teams knocking up victories.” If we had known Blind side snipes intentions we would have possibly lined up a different configuration.
A quick lunch break and we were looking down the tunnel ready for our final battle of the weekend – Southerners vs Sandor Earl and friends. Coming out blazing we had attacking opportunities early but sadly a drop ball on the line resulted in a quick 90m shift from Vagabonds and saw us go 6-0 down. On the restart Southern compounded this error with a drop ball on the restart and before we could blink it was 12-0. Giving it all we had a comeback was on the cards at 12-8 but sadly that was as close as we would get as two late tries saw the Bonds taking the game and the trophy.
The boys shook off this setback and quickly established themselves as the boss’s of Phuket under the leadership of Toa ‘the local Godfather’ and had one hell of an evening. Coach Steel cut a women in half whilst also breaking her skull. Needless to say the flight back to Bkk involved a lot of horrendous jokes and sick bags full of honey Smirnoff. Great weekend all round from the lads!
